With the sad demise of the Family Record Centre and the opening of General Register Offices around the country with information now on microfiche. Does anyone know if the details held on the microfiche contain, in the case of births and marriages the details of the father and his employment like the old Family Record Centre records had, or does it just tell you the volume and page of the record, like the index does and get you to order a certificate, just to find out that you got the wrong person?

Whether you order from the Register Office (preferred because it is more accurate and may be an actual photocopy of your ancestors' handwriting) or order from the GRO, you can always stipulate that the certificate contain certain information.

None of the registers I viewed at the Family Records Centre contained the father's occupation.

I was a regular visitor at the Family Records Centre searching the civil registration index volumes (and weren't they heavy - you needed strong arms to lift them up and down all day). The information you describe was never in the indexes - you had to obtain the certificate for that.

The civil registration indexes on microfiche are images of the original paper volumes, so they are exactly the same. The searchable indexes online are transcriptions of the full entry in the original index and also give exactly the same information (barring transcription errors of course and there are many of those - always check the original image before applying for a certificate).

I hope this clarifies things for you. It is frustrating when there are several possible entries in the index and no way to tell which is the right one. 20 years ago I ordered what I thought was my gt grandfather's birth certificate and researched several generations of people who turned out not to be my ancestors after all. My gt grandpa did not have a birth certificate at all as he was born before 1875 when birth registration became compulsory - before that many births were not registered. (Hope this saves someone else making the same costly mistake).